


The Fine Art of Dying

by laylabinx



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Bromance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Male Bonding, PTSD, Post-Avengers, Steve Feels, Tony Feels, sort of death fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laylabinx/pseuds/laylabinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's not really handling his near death experience after the Battle for New York very well. He finds help and comfort in an unlikely source. Plenty of Tony and Steve feels to go around! Rated for language and mentions of character deaths. No slash, just bromance between these two lovely gents!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fine Art of Dying

**Author's Note:**

> So this was the idea that woke me up at 5 am this morning and just begged to be written. I re-watched the Avengers yesterday and had a bit of an epiphany regarding the similarities between Steve and Tony's "deaths" and that's where this story came from more or less. Also, I just wanted to write a quiet, bonding, bro moment (broment?) between these two because they really have more in common than they realize. Hope you all like it! :D
> 
> A/N: I own nothing!

Tony comes awake with a jolt, sitting upright so fast it makes his head spin. There's a strangled scream that dies in his throat in the split second it takes for him to wake up and he lets out a shuddering gasp instead. He's staring at the shadow-darkened ceiling, heart racing and chest heaving, and he has to swallow the bile that rises in the back of his throat. He's shaking all over, trembling so hard it's vibrating the mattress, and he clenches his teeth to keep them from chattering.

He swings his legs around to the side of the bed, planting his feet on the tile floor so he can feel the solidity of the ground beneath him. One hand tangles itself in his hair, the other gripping the edge of the mattress for stability and he has to tell himself over and over again that's he's not falling. His body won't listen though, his stomach doing a lazy flip that makes him feel nauseous and his brain insisting on reliving the vertigo and the feelings of plummeting to the earth like a red and gold meteor heading straight for the city.

He gives up trying to stay upright and allows himself to fold in half at the waist, slumping forward and resting his forehead against his knees. The change in position helps the vertigo just slightly and it doesn't quite feel like he's stuck on a carousel that won't stop anymore. He forces himself to regulate his breathing, dragging in one deep, halting breath at a time and releasing it with a soft gasp. It takes several minutes of this before Tony can feel his blood pressure begin to lower and his heart rate return to normal.

He focuses on the humming of the arc reactor in his chest, the blue glow bright and brilliant and reminding him that he's still alive. The knuckles of one hand brush over the smooth metal fusing itself into his flesh, feeling the contrast between warm skin and cool metal. He can still remember it flickering after his atmospheric climb, the dull pulse of light as it slowly shut itself off. He can remember the feeling of the shrapnel twisting in his chest, sharp and painful and unremitting, and the last shudder of his heart before it stopped all together. It makes him feel cold all over, chilling him to his bones, and it leaves him shaky and sick. He had died…quite literally. Flat line. No breathing. He. Had. Died.

Suddenly Tony can't stand the darkened room anymore and he jumps out of bed quickly, rewarded with another tidal wave of vertigo for his efforts. He pushes it away and paces around the room, sparing a passing glance at the clock beside the bed. 4:47. Great. He'd gotten about three hours of sleep tonight; that's a new record for this week. Maybe Pepper was right, maybe he should talk to a doctor about getting a prescription for some kind of sleeping pill. As soon as he thinks it, Tony brushes the thought away. He didn't do it after Afghanistan and that was ten times worse than this. He wasn't about to resort to medication now either.

He makes his way to the bedroom door and pulls it open, stepping out into the quiet halls of the Tower. He knew the others were still asleep so he wasn't all that concerned with someone seeing him the emotionally wrecked state he was in at the moment. He knew Clint and Natasha would be dead to the world for at least another eighteen hours; they'd gotten back from their mission late the night before, staggering into the Tower around 11:45. They were both bruised and dirty and looked more than a little exhausted but the mission had been a success so they didn't complain. They had retired to their separate rooms after that and Tony knew better than to say anything when he saw Clint sneak out of his room about an hour later and disappear behind Natasha's closed door.

It was an unspoken and unmentioned ritual between the two; following a mission (particularly a dangerous and dire one like they had been on this time) one or the other would sneak into the other's room and close the door behind them. Tony had no idea what they did behind said closed doors; he wasn't sure if they fucked it out or if they just needed someone warm and solid and alive to sleep next to for the next few hours. He hadn't understood it at first, in fact, he almost found it a bit odd that these two badass assassins needed physical contact in order to cope with the after effects of a mission. It seemed a bit contradictory to their line of work.

But then The Fall happened and Tony had his own (more than) near death experience and he suddenly understood it. He clung to Pepper in the middle of the night like a child for the first few days after the battle, shaking and trembling and trying to get a hold of himself for hours while she gently stroked his hair and whispered soothing reassurances in his ear. He needed her to ground him, something solid to hang onto and convince himself that he wasn't hurtling through the stratosphere anymore. In those first few nights, Tony gripped Pepper's arms so tightly that he left dark, finger-shaped bruises and no amount of apologizing could erase the guilt he felt because of that. Pepper insisted it was alright but he could see the concern behind her eyes. In a way, Tony is almost glad she's out of town for a few days; it meant she would finally get a good night's sleep for the first time in about three weeks.

Tony makes his way to the kitchen, padding down the hallway with bare feet. He stops in front of the coffee maker, flipping it on and grabbing the bag of coffee grounds from the cabinet. He hesitates with the bag in his hand, putting it back after a second's deliberation and grabbing the espresso instead. Since he's the only one awake at this ungodly hour and there's no one else to make coffee for at the moment, he figures he'll make just a cup for himself.

He works with the coffee pot mechanically, his hands moving automatically without him paying attention. Coffee grounds. Water. Cup. It's a monotonous task, one he's done hundreds of times before and one he doesn't even have to think about anymore. At this moment though, alone and in the dark and struggling to keep his knees from buckling because _he was not falling_ , he wishes the task required just a bit more concentration.

He sighs and stares at the cup as it fills with inky black coffee, the smell pushing away the last lingering wisps of sleep and making him more alert. He knows the Tower is only half-full right now which is one of the only things that makes his mini breakdown earlier more bearable. Pepper will be out of town until at least Friday and Bruce was shacking up in the Helicarrier for a few days with some new scientist who thought he had managed to get the Hulk serum under control so Bruce didn't have to worry about leveling a parking lot every time he got a traffic ticket. Thor was back in Asgard keeping watch over Loki after all of his shenanigans so they really had no idea when he would be back. It could be next week, it could be next year; none of them really knew. That just left Tony, the aforementioned Clint and Natasha, and Captain Boy Scout in the Tower.

The coffee finishes brewing and Tony reaches forward and grabs his cup just as the last few drops fall inside. The aroma is thick and sharp and it helps ground him even more when he takes the first scalding sip. It's hot, hot enough to burn and make him cringe, but he doesn't care. Anything is better than the sensation of falling…

He turns to head back down to the hall toward his lab and stops suddenly, freezing mid-step in the hallway. There's someone standing on the terrace. No, not standing. Sitting. There's someone sitting on the terrace with their back to him and their legs dangling over the edge of the balcony. Tony stares for a second, taking in the shadowed silhouette and the darkened contours of the body outside the door. There's only one person he knows that has shoulders like that and would be up at this time of the night like him.

Tony inwardly groans a bit. Great, the last thing he needs right now is to run across Captain freakin' America when he's in a state like this. He doesn't need a lecture and he doesn't need a motivational speech and he certainly doesn't need to be patronized. Everything Captain America stands for is absolutely everything Tony doesn't need right now.

Still…he can't help the tiny ripple of curiosity that flares inside of his mind at seeing the younger man perching on the balcony like a giant, patriotic vulture. For a long second, Tony considers simply ignoring him and walking back to his lab; inevitably, if he goes out there and tries to strike up a conversation with the war vet, Cap will say or do something that will piss him off and that's just icing on the cake of failure that is this morning so far. But the curiosity is gnawing at him, pulling and tugging like a dog with a bone, and he finds himself giving into the irresistible tug and walking toward the door.

If he's honest with himself, it's not Steve that gets under Tony's skin but his bossy, over-bearing alter ego that sets his teeth on edge. Outside of the Captain America persona, Steve really isn't so bad to be around. He's quiet and polite and keeps mostly to himself and he's more than happy to let Tony rule the roost when they're all in the Tower. Captain Spangles only comes out for battles and when shit gets real but until that time comes they're all left with shy and slightly awkward Steve Rogers and that's really not so bad.

Tony pushes the door open with one hand and steps out onto the terrace. It's cool outside, cooler than he had anticipated, and he shivers before he can stop himself. It's quiet too, the traffic and the normal bustle of the city muted and dimmed this early in the morning. The 5 am commute would begin shortly and then the traffic would begin to pick up and get noisy again but until that time, it was quiet and still.

Steve has his back to him, dressed in a plain white t-shirt and a pair of blue checkered sleep pants. He has his sketch pad resting in his lap, a cloth bag of colored pencils sitting on the ground beside him, and he's looking off into the distance to see the horizon just beginning to lighten with the creeping rays of dawn. Both legs are dangled over the side of the building, bare feet swaying slightly back and forth as both wind and unconscious movement causes them to shift. He glances up just slightly when Tony drops down to sit beside him and gives him a slight smile. He doesn't say anything at first but then neither does Tony, they both just sit there, taking in the silent stillness of the early morning and allowing the world to amble on by below them.

When Steve finally does speak, his voice is soft and quiet like he's afraid to wake the world below. "You should be asleep," he says quietly, not turning fully to look at Tony but just glancing at him from the corner of his eye. It's not a command or an order, it's not even a suggestion. It's just a statement of fact. Tony feels the tiny coil of initial annoyance he'd felt before coming out here begin to loosen fractionally.

"I could say the same for you," he shoots back, his voice equally quiet and subdued. He can't remember the last one-on-one conversation he'd had with Steve. Back on the helicarrier maybe? He honestly can't remember; it felt like years ago as opposed to a few weeks.

Steve shrugs one shoulder slightly and nods back to the skyline. "Didn't want to sleep through the sunrise," he tells him simply, blue eyes still glued to the horizon. "This is the best place in the city to see it so I'm taking full advantage."

Tony smiles slightly, taking the compliment without a word. He doesn't quite join Steve on the edge of the balcony but sits against the ledge of the roof that Steve is currently perched on. He leans back against the cool concrete, feeling the solidity of the cement behind him and taking a deep breath. He takes another sip of his coffee and then offers the cup up to Steve.

The younger man takes it and gives it a cursory glance/sniff before taking a small sip. Almost immediately, his face contorts and he coughs into the back of his hand. Tony is almost offended. "Oh my God, what is that?" Steve asks after he finishes his coughing fit, handing the cup back to Tony like it's filled with toxic waste.

"It's espresso, you uncivilized heathen," Tony informs him, taking the cup back a little defensively. His coffee was awesome, he didn't care what anyone said. "And don't make that face. This is like taking a sip from God's personal pond. It's mana from heaven."

"Jeez, it tastes like tar," Steve continues, making another face at the residual taste left in his mouth.

"Well, I hate to break it to you Cap, but that's how I prefer my coffee. Black and bitter and thick enough to trap dinosaurs."

"I'm glad you can stand it," Steve tells him with a chuckle.

"Oh, come on," Tony counters, shifting a bit to look at Steve over his shoulder. "You mean to tell me they didn't give you guys coffee in the army? Wasn't that your diet back then? Coffee and cigarettes and gunpowder?"

Steve laughs again and shakes his head. "Oh, they gave us coffee in the army but it was nothing like that. Our coffee actually tasted like coffee."

"Any coffee that's not espresso is just brown water, Steve," Tony counters again, taking a defiant drink from his cup. "Everyone knows that. God, what have you been doing with your life?"

"Not drinking espresso, apparently," Steve shoots back with a slight shake of his head.

"Damn right you haven't," Tony mutters, taking another sip. It's still hot but not enough to burn and it sends a pleasant warmth all the way down to his stomach with each swallow. He briefly contemplates getting up to go find some bourbon to mix into it but dismisses the idea. No need to ruin perfectly good coffee.

"When was the last time you got a full night's sleep?" Steve asks suddenly, making it a point to keep the conversation as light and unobtrusive as possible. He speaks like he's asking about the weather, not about Tony's mental state, and it's so casual that Tony almost falls for it. He catches himself at the last second though and pulls back.

"Last night," he lies, straightening his shoulders a bit self-consciously. "I slept last night."

"More than two hours, I mean," Steve interjects easily, picking up one of his pencils from the cloth bag.

Oh. Well shit. Tony struggles for a second to come up with a better excuse but Steve answers for him before he can. "I'm guessing about three weeks," the younger man suggests easily, no judgment or accusation in his voice. Nothing but statements of fact.

Tony mentally curses himself; he didn't know he had been that obvious. He felt like he'd been doing a pretty good job of hiding his sleepless nights from the rest of his team. He'd hidden it well enough from Pepper and the others had never brought it up so Tony figured he was in the clear. But now Steve knew or maybe he had always known. Either way, Tony is screwed and he knows he can't exactly lie about it now.

"Yeah," he mumbles with a soft sigh. "That sounds about right."

Steve doesn't say anything right away and Tony doesn't get the feeling of disapproval directed his way so they both just stay silent for a moment. The only sound filling the gap between them is the _scritch-scritch-scratch_ of Steve's pencil as it traces the outline of the city onto the paper. The silence lasts so long that Tony is almost convinced he's been let off the hook when Steve speaks again. "You can talk about it, you know," he offers quietly.

For a split second, Tony considers feigning ignorance in the hopes that the question will dissipate in the air like early morning mist. He wants to drop it, he doesn't want to approach this subject with a ten foot pole let alone bare his soul to his teammate and unofficial Captain. It's too much, it's tearing at him like the razor-sharp claws of an animal and he can't get away. He wants to tell Steve he has no idea what he's talking about, tell him it's nothing and that he can handle it on his own. "I don't know what-"

"The Fall," Steve fills in for him and then, just like that, it's out in the open and Tony can feel himself plummeting all over again, feel the weightlessness of free fall and the abject terror of knowing he was eventually going to hit the ground which was very, _very_ far away. Two words. That's all Steve said was two words and those two words are enough to nearly send Tony into another panic attack. He swallows wordlessly, thickly, and struggles to keep his breathing as normal as possible. If he didn't want to talk about it then he certainly didn't want Steve to see him freaking out about it now either.

Steve glances at him from the corner of his eye, catches the sickly pallor of his skin and the white-knuckle grip Tony has on the concrete below him, and knows he's hit the nail on the head. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Steve tells him quietly, soothingly, hoping to cut through some of the fear in Tony's expression. "I'm just saying that it might help to open up about it at some point." He nudges Tony just slightly with his elbow, jolting the billionaire from his thoughts and forcing him to look up at him. "It doesn't have to be now."

Tony nods a bit shakily, grateful for the reprieve, and forces himself to take a deep breath. Satisfied that he's not about to topple head first into an anxiety attack, Steve turns back to the horizon and resumes sketching. A few more seconds pass in silence before he speaks again. "Believe it or not, I actually understand what you're going through."

Tony wants to laugh, sharp and loud and incredulous, because there is absolutely no way Steve Rogers has any fucking clue what he's going through right now. But then, in that split second of indignant self-defense, he realizes that Steve knows _exactly_ what he's going through. He knows because he went through the same thing over 70 years earlier. Steve had sacrificed himself to save the same city Tony had sacrificed himself for a few weeks ago. One life for another, one nuke to replace another one 70 years in the future. Steve had gone down with the plane while Tony went up with the nuke. The only difference between them was that no one caught Steve went he fell.

Tony swallows hard and clears his throat. "So did-" his voice cracks just the tiniest bit and he clears his throat again. "Did SHIELD make you talk about it after you were unfrozen? Did they sit you in a little white room with a man with a clipboard and encourage you to talk about your feelings?"

Steve smiles a bit humorlessly and nods. "Yeah. Actually, that's all we talked about for about two weeks after I came out of the ice. It was all "what do you remember about the crash" this and "what happened before the ice" that. It got very tedious after a while."

Tony feels a watery smile tug at his own mouth. It disappears almost instantly. "So how does that even work? Am I just supposed to start talking and suddenly have an epiphany and I'm all cured? The power of words at its finest?"

Steve shakes his head slightly. "No, I don't think it's supposed to be a cure, per se. More of a release than anything, I suppose. They encourage you to talk about it so your mind can compartmentalize everything that happened. Instead of being overwhelmed by the trauma, the talking is supposed to redirect your thoughts and allow you to approach the situation in a more objective fashion." Steve reaches into his bag, pulling out a soft yellow pencil and adding a bit of color to his sketch. "That's how they explained it to me at least."

"And did that work?" Tony asks, curiosity and slight hint of hope filtering into his voice.

Steve's pencil traces faint, glowing rays of yellow-gold along the tops of the buildings. "It worked well enough."

Tony nods once and looks down toward the ground. He concrete behind him is solid and safe and he feels himself pressing his back into it a bit more just to be sure. "So what do you do? Just start talking about whatever comes to mind?"

Steve nods slowly and chooses another pencil from his bag. "Why don't you start from the beginning?" He suggests, no condescension or judgment in his voice. Just a simple suggestion. "Start from when you started flying toward the portal and just go from there."

Tony takes a deep breath and unclenches one hand from its death grip on the roof. If this had worked for Steve, maybe he could give it a shot too. "I don't remember thinking about much of anything when I first grabbed it, I just knew I had to get it away from the city." He remembers the feeling of the nuke on his back, metal-encased hands gripping the outer shell and holding onto it with everything he had as they both climbed higher.

"As I got higher, though, I knew it was going to be a one-way trip…" He remembers trying to call Pepper, seeing her beautiful face on the screen inside his helmet. He remembers apologizing to her over and over again as he flew higher. He was never coming home again. He would never see her again. Never hold her, kiss her, tell her how much he loved her…

"I tried to call Pepper…"

Steve is listening quietly. He's stopped sketching and he's watching Tony from his perch on the ledge. His expression is unreadable, passive and calm like this is the most normal thing in the world.

Tony coughs once and clears his throat. "I uh…I made it through the portal and let the nuke go but by that time my suit was beginning to shut down. I could feel the pressure from the outside, pushing against me with indescribable force." That was one of the last coherent memories he had before he was back on the ground; he remembered thinking he was going to be crushed like a tin can in the vacuum of space.

"After that, it was all kind of a blur," Tony continues, twisting his hands idly around the base of the coffee cup. "I couldn't breathe…couldn't think…I remember falling." He sucks in a deep breath as the feeling of weightlessness hits him again full force. It takes a second to push it back again. "The next thing I know, Hulk is jolting me back to life with some kind of jolly green battle cry and I'm laying on the ground talking about shawarma."

Steve chuckles softly and shakes his head. "I thought it was a little odd that the first thing on your mind was food."

Tony feels himself smile and rolls his eyes. "Hey, man, priorities. You just get done saving the planet from giant space slugs and the only thing on your mind is 'good God, I'm starving!'"

Steve smiles again and glances back toward the first prickles of sunrise. The tops of the buildings are now crowned in red-gold from the first rays of the sun. "So is that what's keeping you from sleeping at night?"

Tony sighs softly and shakes his head. Hrll, if he's baring his soul, he may as well go all out. "In my dreams I'm still falling…" he admits quietly. "But in my dreams the portal closes before I make it back through. It closes and I'm left in the vast emptiness of space, just floating around forever." He shivers unintentionally and grips the coffee cup a bit tighter "In other dreams, I make it back through and just keep falling, no ground, no buildings. Nothing. I just fall and fall and fall. It never stops."

He sighs heavily and shakes his head again. "So there you have it, Dr. Phil. That's the reason I can't sleep at night and that's the reason I haven't been able to so much as go down in an elevator in the past three weeks without feeling like the ground is going to give way and I'm going to fall into a black hole." Tony downs the rest of his coffee in one gulp and drops the cup onto the ground beside him. "Pretty pathetic, huh?"

Steve shakes his head. "No, I don't think it's pathetic at all. I think it's pretty normal for what you went through actually. You went through something no one else has, you experienced things that others just can't understand. I think what you're going through right now is very normal after an experience like that."

Tony laughs dryly. "So having a panic attack in an elevator when it's going down to the ground floor is normal, huh?"

Steve smiles with the same dry expression and grabs a blue pencil from his bag. "Tony, after I was unfrozen I couldn't take a shower for a week and a half without having a panic attack. I don't think losing it in an elevator is that far outside the realms of possibility."

Tony blinks in surprise at Steve's comment. Steve openly admitting he was afraid of something? That was a new one. "You were afraid of showers?"

The younger man nods slowly and continues shading. "Yep. Any kind of water, actually. Showers, bath tubs, all of it. Turning on a sink was enough to raise my blood pressure for a while."

Tony wants to laugh because, loathe as he is to admit it, Steve is quite possibly one of the bravest and most fearless men he's ever met in his life. Steve was Captain America and Captain America wasn't afraid of anything. But Steve was and he had just admitted that to Tony. And what was worse, Tony knew exactly what had caused the irrational fear of water.

Contrary to popular belief, the plane crash and the ice had not been what killed Steve back in 1943. It was only a part of it. When SHIELD had found him over 70 years later, while heavily involved in the process of unfreezing him, they had had to suction water out of his lungs. True, Steve was frozen solid when they found him but that wasn't what killed him. Steve had drowned.

"You know," Steve says, pulling Tony from his thoughts. "When the agents first started talking to me after the ice, asking me questions about the plane crash and everything like that, I think a lot of them were under the assumption that the freeze had damaged my memory. There was this general theory that I wouldn't remember much because of the trauma, the decreased brain activity and all that." Steve grabs another pencil and glances back toward the horizon. The sun is just beginning to peek above the edges of the city. "They thought I wouldn't remember anything so I played along, feigning ignorance and telling them that my mind was a blank. It was too personal at the time, too real...I didn't want them to know how much I really remembered."

Tony frowns and looks at him a bit more carefully. Even though Steve is focused on shading his sketch, his eyes are stormy and dark, turbulent with a myriad of emotions flickering in the blue. "So how much of it did you remember?" He asks after a second, unable to contain his curiosity. In all the time they'd been together in the Tower, all the times they'd trained and been in the same proximity as one another, Tony suddenly realizes that he's never asked Steve about his life before the Avengers. He's never asked about the War, about the ice, nothing. This is new territory and Tony feels the need to pursue it.

Steve is quiet for a moment. Now that it's his turn to share with the class, he's suddenly hesitant and uncomfortable. Finally, after another second or so of silence, he looks up from his sketch and mutters the word, "everything."

He hesitates for another second, absently tapping the pencil against the corner of the sketchbook. "I guess it's thanks to the serum, a weird kind of side effect or something. But I can remember everything about that day. Every last detail like I'm watching it on film. I remember the moment of impact, the moment of realizing I was trapped, the moment I died. I remember all of it."

Tony is stunned by the realization and finds that his curiosity is now at an all time high. Steve had listened to his fears and anxieties regarding his temporary death after The Fall but he's never considered asking Steve about his own experiences. Tony had only been dead for a few minutes and most of that had been a blur of falling and lack of oxygen. Steve had been dead for over 70 years and he could still remember every detail with high definition clarity. It was a little staggering to say the least.

"What was it like?" Tony asks, not realizing his voice is just barely above a whisper when he speaks. "When the plane went down. What was it like?"

Steve keeps the pencil paused on the edge of the sketchbook and he doesn't bring himself to meet Tony's gaze. For a second, the older man is afraid he's crossed some line and that Steve is about to close himself off completely and drop the subject like it never happened. Then, Steve takes a small breath and lets it out as a sigh. "It was a lot like yours in the beginning. All I could think about was keeping that plane away from the city."

"I didn't know how to fly and I knew I was going to have to crash the plane but I figured I could make it out in time after the impact." The pencil starts moving again, almost on its own, shading aimlessly in the shadows of the buildings on the paper. "I was talking to Peggy the whole time the plane was going down. I tried to focus on her voice and the picture I had with me. I knew that if I died I wanted my last thoughts to be of her."

Steve's eyes darken just a bit as he speaks but he continues on with the story. "When the plane finally crashed, it was like being hit by a train. I was actually knocked unconscious for a few minutes after the impact because there was a time when I really didn't remember anything. I didn't wake up until the plane was already sinking."

"The impact had crushed a good portion of the plane when it hit so the water wasn't rushing in all at once but it did fill the cabin pretty quickly. I woke up and there was already about a foot of it in the cabin. I just remember thinking, _'I need to get out, I need to get out'_." Steve shakes his head a bit and sighs softly. "I think in the back of my mind I knew it was pointless, I knew I wasn't getting out of there alive. But the rest of me just couldn't accept that. It was freezing and my hands were numb but I refused to give up. I struggled with the door until the water was up to my chin. By the time it was over my head I knew there was no point anymore."

Steve pauses for a long moment, eyes distant and hand still over his sketch. He's so silent and still that Tony almost considers poking him but then Steve is speaking again and he lets the urge go. "It was weird, you know? The sinking. It was a lot like falling only slower. And it was dark. I've never seen anything so dark in all my life; it was like the light had literally been drained out of the water. As the plane went deeper, it just got colder and darker."

Steve shivers unconsciously and rolls his shoulders back a bit. "I swam around inside the plane for a while, finding little pockets of air and places that hadn't been damaged by the crash. The pressure was too much though and the plane began to buckle and collapse in on itself, closing off the few open areas that were left. After a few minutes they were all gone and the water completely filled the cabin. Then it was just…dark."

Steve stops then, staring out across the morning glow of the city and blinking slowly as the first warm rays of the sun begin to creep up above the rooftops. He doesn't speak again and Tony doesn't really push him. They both know what happened after that. Still, Tony can't shake the last traces of curiosity from his mind and a part of him needs to know just a little bit more.

"So what did it feel like?" He asks quietly after a few more silent minutes pass between them. Steve glances over from the corner of his eye, meeting Tony's gaze. The older man realizes he needs to elaborate a bit more and forces the question out before he can back away from it. "When you heart stopped beating."

Steve is silent for another few seconds, contemplative as he mulls over the question. "It was scary at first," he answers after a moment, looking down at the ground far below them. "It was like losing a part of myself that had been with me all my life. But then after a little while everything just got still and quiet…and I began to feel warm again. It was dark and I couldn't see anything anymore and I remember thinking it felt a lot like falling asleep. So I just closed my eyes."

"And then you died," Tony says simply. It's not a question; it's his turn to make the statements of fact.

Steve gives him a small, sad smile and nods once. "And then I died," he agrees quietly.

They both fall silent again, Steve quietly resuming his sketching and Tony mulling over everything Steve had told him. The similarities between their "deaths" was shocking to say the least and he'd never realized how much they had in common until just now. Both died to save the same city and both were brought back for a second chance at life. It was like déjà vu in the oddest sense of the word.

"Well," Tony mumbles after a few more minutes of contemplation. "I have to say this is a pretty shitty club to be a part of, Steve."

Steve smiles softy and nods. "I agree. I don't remember signing up for a membership."

"We should make badges."

"Or flags."

Tony rolls his eyes. "Jesus, Captain Patriot; is there anything about you that doesn't scream "America!" at the top of it's lungs?"

Steve chuckles and shrugs. "Very little. If the army could have turned me into the embodiment of the Star-Spangled Banner, I'm pretty sure they would have."

"Well quit it," Tony mutters, picking up a pebble from the roof and tossing it across the balcony. "I already feel like whistling Dixie while I'm sitting next to you, I don't need any kind of encouragement to start wearing Stars and Stripes everywhere I go."

"Duly noted," Steve says with a smile, grabbing another pencil from his bag and adding more color to the sketch.

They sit quietly again, the ebb and flow of traffic beginning to cycle through the city down below. Tony pulls his knees up to his chest, resting his elbows on top of them and tilting his head back against the ledge of the roof. He's tired, strung out and worn like fraying cotton thread, but he knows if he tries to go back to sleep, the nightmare will only return again. "Does it ever get better?" He asks to no one in particular though if he has to guess, he figures the question is directed at Steve.

The younger man stops, pencil hovering over the paper, and thinks for a second. "It will," he says after a moment, absolute certainty in his voice when he speaks. "Maybe not now, but in time it will get better. The way I see it, we were given a second chance for a reason, even if we don't know what it is now. You have to experience death in order to appreciate life, right?"

Tony smiles dryly. "You've been flipping through Bruce's philosophy books again, haven't you?"

Steve shrugs casually and keeps shading. "Hey, some of them are pretty compelling."

"Yeah, yeah," Tony mutters, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. "Compelling is just another word for you were bored and finished reading Hemingway."

"Maybe," Steve answers cryptically.

Tony just shakes his head and passes a hand over his tired eyes. "Jeez kid, I have got to get you caught up with modern literature."

"Fair enough," Steve says, putting the last touches on his sketch and dropping the pencil back into its bag. He blows on the paper once to clear away any left over pencil dust before ripping it out and handing it to Tony.

The billionaire takes the drawing and looks at carefully. The skyline of the city is sketched across the page in soft yet defined pencil strokes, each building easily recognizable and familiar. The buildings are colored in muted shades of purple and blue, dark colors contrasting in the shadows of the morning. The sky above the buildings is a soft mix of yellow, orange, pink, and light blue, warm morning sunshine bleeding through the sketch. It looks like a photograph, traced and shaded onto thick paper with an expert hand. This is the city they had given their lives to protect. This was the city they had died for. In that moment, the fear and the dread and the lingering feelings of falling leave Tony's mind as he looks at the sketch, as he sees the world the way Steve saw it. In that moment, he knows their sacrifice was worth it and that he has no regrets. In that moment, he would die again a thousand times over to keep this city safe.

He starts to pass it back to Steve but the younger man shakes his head and waves him off. "Keep it. It's nice to have a reminder sometimes," he says with a small smile like he somehow just read Tony's thoughts.

Tony nods and takes the sketch back, resting it on his lap and leaning back against the ledge. He's not okay, not by a long shot, but at least he knows he's not completely alone in this anymore. He finds himself leaning to the side just slightly until his shoulder is resting against Steve's hip. "Thanks Steve," he mumbles quietly, his voice almost carried away by the morning breeze.

He feels Steve lean into him just a bit, solid and grounding. "Anytime, Tony."

The sun continues to rise, a welcome morning for the sleepy city. It's warm and bright but the breeze is cool and it waltzes its way between the buildings and down the street. High above, on the balcony of Stark Tower, sitting next to Captain America himself, Tony doesn't feel like he's falling again. And for the first time in over 70 years, even with his feet swinging over the edge of the roof, Steve doesn't feel like he's sinking anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, guys! :D


End file.
